CREW ASKS CHAIRMAN CONYERS FOR HEARING ON FBI SEXUAL PREDATOR INVESTIGATION PRACTICES

23 Jan 2007 // Washington, DC – Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, Jr., requesting a hearing on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) practices and procedures in investigating potential child sexual predators. CREW asked for the hearing after yesterday’s release of a Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) report regarding the FBI’s response to former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) emails to a former House page. The Judiciary Committee has oversight jurisdiction over the FBI.

Although the report completely vindicates CREW and finds that the FBI made numerous inaccurate statements to the media about CREW’s actions, the most troubling aspect of the report is the IG’s account of the FBI’s internal decision-making process in regard to investigating the emails.

On July 21, 2006, CREW forwarded to the FBI copies of the Foley emails. Upon learning in early October that the FBI had not begun an investigation into the Foley matter based on the emails CREW had provided, CREW asked for a review by the DOJ IG.

According to the report, once CREW sent the emails to a special agent in the Public Corruption Squad, they were forwarded to the Crimes Against Children Squad and then to the Cyber Crimes Squad. The IG found that the supervisory agents in neither of these squads had substantial experience with child sexual predators.

Because the emails did not contain sexually explicit language, the supervisory special agent in Cyber Crimes did not believe they merited investigation or even notifying anyone outside of the FBI of their existence, explaining to the IG, “we are not the ethics police.”

In contrast, the IG found that the emails “provided enough troubling indications on their face, particularly given the position of trust and authority that Foley held with respect to House pages, that a better practice for the FBI would have been to take at least some follow-up steps with regard to the emails.” The IG stated that if the Bureau did not believe an interview with the former page was warranted, the FBI “should have considered notifying the House authorities in charge of the page program,” or “[a]t the least . . . the FBI should have notified CREW, the complainant in this case, that the FBI had declined to open an investigation.”

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today, “based on the FBI’s handling of the Foley matter, there are serious questions on how the FBI conducts its investigations into potential child predators. CREW asks that Chairman Conyers hold a hearing on FBI’s practices as soon as possible, in order to help prevent other children from being victimized.”

Finally, Sloan noted that the supervisory special agents might have looked to the FBI’s own materials, such as the pamphlet, “A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety” before dismissing the emails as insignificant.

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Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions.

For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact Naomi Seligman Steiner at 202.408.5565/press@citizensforethics.org.